#oneaday Day 606: Stay Safe

A friend of mine got "doxxed" today. If you're unfamiliar with the word, this means that trolls found his personal details and spread them around online with malicious intent. Specifically, they found out my friend's real name, the city in which they live and their workplace, and proceeded to tweet at said workplace with vile accusations of paedophilia.

Regrettably, I have been through something similar. It was back in 2011, I believe. One evening I logged on to Twitter only to discover a torrent of abuse in my mentions from people referring to me as a "paedophile". Over the course of the next couple of hours, I received several emails and phone calls from family members and friends informing me that someone had been in contact with them — usually by phone — making these vile accusations in person.

It was a frightening, horrifying experience at the time, but a bit of rational thinking after the fact uncovered the truth behind the whole attack: why it happened, how it happened, and how to avoid it happening again.

In my case, I was attacked because I had stated publicly that I enjoyed the then-new My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic animated series. This, believe it or not, was enough to pick me out as a prospective target for the troll group in question, and their modus operandi was — and apparently still is, if it's the same group — to spread horrible accusations online. It has been the same case for my friend; the trolls in question don't actually believe they really are a paedophile — they just have a vendetta against people who are interested in anime, and some heated online debates my friend was involved in earlier today was enough to paint a target on his back. 

Accusations of paedophilia are one of the most potentially damaging things you can level at someone. I talked a bit about why that is the case in my article on Destructoid's review of Valkyrie Drive from a few years back — check out that piece here if you haven't read it before. Suffice to say that the choice of this particular accusation is very deliberate on the part of the troll groups — it's an accusation with a heavy emotive charge; one that makes people angry and irrational, and, regrettably, not all that likely to pursue the truth. Instead, with social media being the way it is, those angry people will then proceed to spread the lies further and further — assuming they gained any traction in the first place, which they sometimes don't.

In my case, my family and friends were located as a result of publicly available personal information I had online — specifically, in the WHOIS record of a domain I owned at the time. Working outwards from that information, the trolls tracked down my Facebook and Twitter accounts, my WordPress blog, the website and contact details of my brother, my parents' contact details, the website I was running at the time while I was between jobs and the contact details of the person who owned said website. I am fortunate in that I was unemployed at the time, otherwise I have little doubt they would have tracked down my workplace, too, as they have done with my friend today.

I went to the local police with all the evidence of harassment I had, and reported the matter to Twitter. The police listened to my concerns, but ultimately weren't able (or willing?) to do anything, and the most Twitter did was suspend my old username, because the trolls had hijacked it to post vile shit in my name when I had attempted to "hide" from them while panicking.

Ultimately it all blew over with no permanent damage — though I believe there's still a page out there somewhere that highlights nothing more than just how stupid the whole thing was. But it was terrifying at the time, and I completely understand how my friend feels when they say they are fearing for their life and livelihood right now.

As a "survivor" of this sort of attack, I have a few recommendations for those who think they might need them. This shouldn't be something anyone has to worry about, but unfortunately the Internet is an untamed wasteland of festering sewage rather than the brave new frontier of knowledge that was promised back in the late '90s. Anyway:

• Don't list your workplace online unless you absolutely have to for some reason. Even then, question if you really have to. I have not mentioned my place of work anywhere online, I closed down my LinkedIn account without updating it when I got my current job, and have not even mentioned it to close friends online in any sort of context that could find its way out into public.

• If you have a domain name or website, pay that little extra to hide your details. My entire incident stemmed from me cheaping out on my web hosting. Pay the couple of extra quid a month to hide your details and replace them with some generic company name and address.

• Do not engage or respond to the trolls. They are trying to get a reaction and hoping that your stress, frustration, anger and fear will get the better of you, leading to you doing or saying something they can take further advantage of. Shut down all possible avenues of communication as much as possible. Report and block the instigators. Explain the situation to your friends in a private environment such as email or Discord. Private or deactivate your social media accounts if you need to. But do not engage.

• Explain the situation to family and friends. It can be embarrassing to talk about given the nature of the accusations, but explain the situation to anyone you think they might go after. Your family and friends know you much better than some random idiot on the Internet. Who do you think they are going to believe?

• Remember that the situation is inevitably less serious than it appears. In the heat of the moment, this can be easy to forget. But in the case of my friend's incident earlier today, the "evidence" the doxxers compiled and shared was nothing more than an archive of their Facebook page, their spouse's Facebook page, and two Steam accounts. None of these "proved" anything whatsoever.

I hope none of you reading this ever have to go through this experience, as it's a really unpleasant thing to deal with. It is an unfortunate reality of certain parts of the Internet, however, so I hope the above advice and support proves helpful should you find yourself needing it.

Stay safe out there!